At Any Cost
by Xekstrin
Summary: The cost of life is death. Cyclonis' death. The end of terror, the end of innocence. This is the price they all have to pay.


**A/N:** Though you don't need to read it to understand this story, this is a response to PhaerynTao's story, "Iron Maiden". Told from a different point of view, I also alter the ending. It's still not a happy ending but I hope you get the same sense of catharsis I got after finishing "Iron Maiden". I strongly suggest you go and read it right now.

Let me make one thing clear. I didn't write this to "fix" her version, or attempt to "try and make it better". That's insulting to Tao, and it's heartbreaking to me, because I truly meant this as a work of love and admiration for a brilliant writer.

Long Live Cyclonia

**OoOoOo**

They had carted it out a few hours ago, a great steel box that is now settled so grim and silent in front of me on the raised platform. The only people here at the site of execution are Piper and me, both here to see the method of death firsthand. Tomorrow people would be packed in, fighting for a good spot to gawk at the brutality. They'd rush in like they were bumpkins at the quadrant fair instead of Atmosian citizens.

At first, I hadn't believed it when the Sky Council informed me of the way my greatest enemy would die. Well, to tell the truth I hadn't even known what an Iron Maiden was.

Piper knew.

She had choked back something that sounded like a strangled cry and turned her head aside, barely retaining enough composure to explain to me and the rest of the Storm Hawks. Good old Piper. An encyclopedia even when faced with… _this _thing. Informing us about the body-shaped box and the effigy of a lady that was often engraved on the lid.

Iron Maiden.

The last arms you'd ever feel around you.

The box is open now, so I can see for myself the gleaming tips of the spikes. They're surprisingly clean, and I can't help but wonder if Cyclonis is the first person they'll ever pierce.

"They can't do this."

I glance aside at Piper, standing next to me. Her hands are clasped to her chest, tangerine eyes transfixed on the Maiden. Her face is contorted, whether from fear, anger, or sorrow I really can't tell. I always felt like out of all the Storm Hawks, I knew Piper best, but even then she was something of an enigma to me. And it had nothing to do with the fact that I'm awkward with girls in general. It's just... Piper. Who can really understand Piper? Who can really understand anyone, or why they do the things they do?

Or why I want to save the one person everyone else wants murdered?

She tears her eyes from the box and they land on me. Oh no. God no. Not me. Don't look at me now. Don't force me to be the leader now, even if I knew it would happen because hey, I _am _the leader. I'm the one who bursts out with a plan last second. I'm the one who breaks the rules so I can build them up in a way that makes everyone happy. Aerrow the Mediator.

But there's no way to make this end happy.

"Aerrow, this is _wrong_," she tells me like I don't already know, grasping onto the arm of my sleeve and tugging at it, demanding that I look at her and not the box. "There's got to be something we can do. We can appeal to the Sky Council. Get a lawyer. Have a trial."

"There already was a trial," I remind her, voice soft.

"A real trial," she says, but even as she says it she sort of starts to taper off. Really, what more trial did they need? Cyclonis herself admitted her guilt- as if anyone else could be responsible for raising an empire out of its ashes and using it to try and conquer the free world by plunging it into a constant state of warfare.

"We can at least ask for her to be... I don't know..." her hands find their way to her face, fingers crawling through her blue hair and pulling at it, her eyes squeezed shut to keep the tears at bay. "Hung? Shot? I don't even know why they have to kill her when they're leaving the Dark Ace alone. I don't _know_! I don't _know _what the right thing to do is, but it c-c-can't be _this_!"

She breaks down. Even if her eyelids are closed they can't hold the tears back forever. I find myself strangely null to her pain- Piper, my best friend, is crying and all I can do is stand there like a chump.

"This is just insane! How can they do this? How did this get past the war acts? All the laws against inhumane treatment of POWs? Even if she is... Even if she's done all the things she's done, this puts us down at her level. Don't they see that? This makes us animals. This isn't justice- this is…!"

She waves her hands to the box. Because that's all it is- a box. Shaped for a human to fit inside. Like how a coffin is just a box. "This is th-th-the m-most terrible... the most t-terrible..." She sucks in a huge breath, crossing her arms tightly and lowering her head, quivering in a silent battle to get back her composure.

Crying over a death-box because a girl who wasn't her friend is going to be impaled through the throat, heart, legs. Everywhere it would hurt. I find myself walking up to the death-box and putting my hand against the spikes. They're crystal tipped. Crystals destroying the one who wanted to use crystals to destroy us. It probably would hurt. Hurt and bleed just long enough for her to feel the hurt before she died and who knew what would happen then? Maybe her body would be thrown to the crowd like meat to a pack of starving dogs. Icing on the cake.

_Yum_, I think blearily.

And then suddenly I could see it. I could see it like it was really happening, the spikes under my hands soaked in her blood, the scent of her death clawing its way up my nose, and her body literally being ripped apart- what was left of it anyway. Her eyes would be gauged out and her head posted gloriously on top of the ramparts of Terra Atmosia for everyone to see the death of the hated Empress. The rest would be trampled by the raving horde and my friends would be caught in the middle, tossed to and fro by the mob as they tried to get out, get out before they saw something even worse than the death of justice in Terra Atmosia, worse than the death of a girl we knew for one day as "Lark" before we knew her as the cunning Cyclonis.

And _him_. Oh, yes, I could see him clearer and sharper than anything else, protected from my blades by coming over to our side. _Crawling _back to our side as the judge had said it in Cyclonis' trial yesterday, turning in the woman he was supposed to protect. The Dark Ace, my rival above all rivals, had betrayed his Master Cyclonis.

This was a new low point in humanity.

The Dark Ace is on our side and pardoned while this girl is sacrificed and slaughtered.

And then when I'm ready to lose all control and run to him and slice him to pieces like his Master is about to be, I realize I am not at the execution. The execution is tomorrow. I am in today. I'm here with Piper who finally stopped her crying but stares stonily at the ground, quaking so softly less observant people probably wouldn't have noticed. "Piper..." I say, just loud enough for her to hear. Her head jerks up to look at me, the whites of her eyes trailed with red veins.

I walk back to her and take her hand. "Let's go home. I can't be here another minute."

She only nods and follows me, fingers grasping my hand so tight it hurts.

**OoOoOo**

Stork slams the bottle down onto the meeting table where we generally flesh out our plans for the next mission. Of course, today there is no mission. Today we try to get ready for tomorrow, for the closing of the death-box and the end of Cyclonis. True to Stork's bizarre nature, he is the only one of us to manage a weak, rather insane smile. He looks around at us expectantly while opening the bottle.

"Shot of whiskey, anyone?" he asks, eyelid jumping. Not only was he the oldest Storm Hawk, he was also more than old enough to drink; I am still surprised. I'd never seen him take anything stronger than pain relievers. "I hear it's tradition among you humans to get completely plastered when someone close to you is dead or dying," he says by way of explanation, guzzling down his shot like a drowning man. Wincing and sighing, he sloshes another one into the shot glass, giving me the distinct impression that this wasn't the first bottle he'd opened today.

"Pass that shit over here, man," Finn says with none of his usual enthusiasm. He's sitting at the table with his chin pillowed on his arms, the edges of his mouth turned downward in a frown. "If Cyclonis wasn't close to us, I don't know who was. I mean, think about it. She ran our lives."

I don't say anything, though I do agree. She wasn't close in the sense of familiarity or, God-forbid, through blood relations, but the driving force in all our lives for months on end was always... her. To stop her. To capture her and end this reign of terror. For me, there's of course a personal vendetta involved, the "her ancestors killed my ancestors" kind of deal. Not to mention the way she toyed with Piper's feelings that day, that one day when we met a giggly stranger who turned out to be not a stranger at all.

The worst part was Piper, being Piper, didn't want me to worry. She smiled her Piper smile at me, pretending everything was fine and her trust wasn't completely shattered.

_"I'm OK... it's not like Cyclonis actually hurt me..."_

Oh, but she did. I could see it. Piper's big heart had more than enough love, even for a complete stranger, but it was taken from her. She used Piper, pretended they were friends, and then attacked us when we were all vulnerable. A lying, manipulative witch. No one did that kind of thing to my squadron, to my friends, and got away clean.

I find a glass in my hand and I raise it up, clinking it against Junko's. The big wallop's hand completely envelops the tiny glass.

"To Cyclonis," he says, venturing a small sip. "Now that she's gone, the world should be a better place."

"Should be," Piper says, curled up in her own chair far from the rest of us. She nurses her glass like it's her first born child while Stork and Finn knock back shot after shot, her eyes glazed and far away. "But I wonder if it really will."

Once again I'm at her side, my hand on her shoulder and squeezing gently. "That's what we're here for," I remind her. But I'm speaking for everyone, eyes blazing. "To make sure that peace is preserved."

Stork's long tongue flicks nervously against the bottom of his empty glass. He grips it tightly with both hands, looking almost confused as to why there's nothing inside the thing. "At any cost," he adds, his dark tone matching the vibe of the room perfectly.

"No matter who the enemy is," Finn keeps it up, blond head limply tilted backwards, eyes focused on nothing.

Junko plops down next to the sharpshooter, ruffling his hair with fondness. "We've got to stick by each other no matter what, right buddy?"

"That's right. The sky's never the limit, guys. We need to be here for Atmos even after Cyclonis is gone. We're going to make sure nothing like this ever has to happen..." I look to Piper. "...ever again." I continue watching Piper, hoping for some sort of response from her. But the only thing she says is an echo of Stork's words:

"At any cost." She sets her drink aside untouched and leaves for her room, locking herself in. All through the night of our morbid celebrations I can hear her tinkering in her lab with various crystals, losing herself in the work while Stork and Finn get utterly smashed and Junko sits in uncharacteristic silence, staring at the floor. Me? I hover around Piper's door, hoping for an excuse to go inside but knowing there was none.

I don't think any of us are going to sleep tonight.

I doubt Cyclonis will, either.

**OoOoOo**

The cost of experience is innocence. The cost of revenge- justice.

The cost of life is death.

Her death.

The crowd is howling for her blood as she is led by the Sky Knights of Atmosia to her death-box. It's only by a twist of fate that we're not the ones actually escorting her to the afterworld, since the Storm Hawks are not even technically a real Sky Knight squadron.

I don't know who moved first- who ever does?- but after the first stone was flung it was like a free for all in there. All sorts of disgusting things criss cross the air, all aiming for Cyclonis. The platform surrounded on all sides by a seething mass of people, held back only by a thin line of well-equipped Sky Knights. It seems my waking nightmare from yesterday might come true, only ten times worse- they'd tear her limb from limb while she was still alive. I can feel their hatred swimming around me so thick I want to vomit, but considering that Piper and Radarr are sitting at my feet with their backs resting against my legs, that's probably a bad idea.

We shouldn't even be here. I tried to tell my squadron that there were other things we could be doing than torturing ourselves by watching all we strived for diminished to a mere spectacle of human ugliness. But none of them would hear of it- even Finn and Stork managed to drag their drunk asses over here to try and support each other, both of them standing a little lopsided but almost sober in their somber expressions. Junko looks ready to run away and hide, and I don't know what Piper's face looks like. I'm not sure I want to know.

The part that rips at me the most is the fact that Cyclonis isn't being dragged to her fate by the guards. The day before yesterday she was stark raving mad, fighting against her captors like a wild animal. When I had seen that, I half expected her to get loose and turn on me, and I honestly don't know whether I would have fought back or not.

Either way, she's walking ahead of them on her own now, head held high. Ready for this. Accepting this like her own enemies still haven't been able to. She's taking herself to her own...

She turns around in that last moment. Looks at us. Directly at _me_, it feels like, until her eyes trail downward to find Piper. Then they dart away again, scanning the sea of hatred until she finds what she wants. Her lilac eyes don't say anything to me, her carefully maintained neutral expression not betraying what went on in the mind of a killer, a dictator, a terribly confused child. My gaze follows hers and I see it now- see _him_, see him clearly, and I've never hated the Dark Ace more than I do now.

You betrayed her. Maybe the only thing that could have been called loyalty or honor in your life. She trusted you like Piper trusts me and you _threw it away, _you _bastard_.

Piper gets up to her feet, puts her hand on my shoulder like a warning, but I'm not sure who she's warning. Me, not to kill the Dark Ace? Herself, not to run to the rescue of the girl she befriended that day, so long ago?

"Don't look," I tell her, grabbing her too hard, putting her face against my chest but she fights against me, trying to turn around, her lower lip quivering with the threat of tears again.

"Oh God. They're doing it," she says to me in a frantic voice, a whisper that quickly turns into shouting. "Aerrow- _Aerrow_! Oh no!"

Damn. Too late. She saw.

"Aerrow, she's in the maiden. She's _in _it."

This is true. I can see her still, standing inside with her eyes closed, head bowed and her bound hands in front of her almost as if in prayer.

"_Aerrow, do something! For the love of God, stop this_!"

And I hear a scream from someone I do not know. Surely it's not Piper, because Piper doesn't sound like a small child, shrieking in terror and panic, begging me for help. But it sounds enough like Piper so that my legs move without me telling them to- it's Piper telling them to. I shove past the crowd and leap onto the platform, decking flat the guard that tries to stop me, skidding to a halt just in front of my enemy standing corpse-still inside her death-box.

Cyclonis' eyes shoot wide in shock, since she no doubt figured she'd be dead by now. I put my hands on her shoulders and she looks up at me. Neither of us say a word, but I don't see any hope swimming in her face. She knows I'm not here to rescue her. She gave up all hope of rescue when the Dark Ace never said a word through out her pathetically short trial.

He had been her hope. I'm simply her escape.

Grabbing her by the front of her shirt, I pull her roughly from the Iron Maiden's grasp. I pull her to me, feeling her heart beat against mine before I throw her to the floor, far from the death box. She tries to get up but only manages to struggle up to her knees before I fall upon her, practically falling on top of her. With my free hand, I take out my dagger and slash it across her throat, plunge it between her ribs, stab her, kill her, feel that frightened beating rhythm stop.

Mine are the last arms she feels around her.

I hear the roar of my own blood in my ears, pounding hard enough to give me a headache and fog the vision of Cyclonis resting against me, pathetically thin and fragile. She looks younger than Piper. She looks like she's asleep. "I'm so sorry," I speak, lips mashed against her ear even though she can't hear me. One hand cups the back of her head, fingers grasping twilight hair, holding her to me, pushing her forehead against my chest. She'll never respond, never say, "Thank you", or "Damn you," whichever was the last thought to cross her mind when she knew what I was going to do. The only thing I _could _do, whether it was right or wrong.

When I set her down, I can see the last vestiges of a smile on her face. That has to be good enough.

The roar in my ears transforms into the roar of the crowd. I wonder if they'll howl for my blood now, now that I robbed them of their vengeance. But when I straighten myself up I see the jubilation on their faces, the mad shrieks of celebration. With a lurch, I mentally rewind everything as it must have seemed to them- Aerrow, their hero, storming onto the stage to take the villain and slice her up in public view. I hear my name in their voices, chanting over and over, and so many other things my mind just can't compute. They got their bloodshed. They basked in it. Cyclonis is dead. She died quickly, and humanely. Piper is crying, but standing upright and with no sobs escaping her mouth. Thanking me- questioning me?- with her eyes alone.

Cyclonis is dead.

And everyone got what they wanted.

Oh Aerrow... the great mediator.

Stumbling past the hailing crowds, I think I may have hurt a few people on my way out. Everyone wants to touch me, or the blood on my blade, or the blood on my face, and hands. Everyone wants to kiss me, hug me, thank me for killing this evil, evil woman. Some guy I've never seen before tells me about how his only son died fighting Cyclonian Talons. Wives tell of limbs lost and family deceased. I've avenged them all, they say. I'm the greatest hero the world has ever known because I stabbed an unarmed sixteen year old girl to death.

I don't know how I manage to find my Skimmer but I do. Lunging onto it, I scream into the air and fly away as far and as fast as I can.

The winds do nothing to dry the endless stream of tears running down my face.


End file.
